In the computer industry, there is a constant demand for products that are both smaller and have higher performance. The hard disk drive used in virtually every personal computer is one of the largest and most expensive components installed therein. Thus, disk drive manufacturers have continuously tried to decrease the size and the cost of their drives while at the same time increasing the amount of mass storage provided.
The computer industry has developed certain standard sized disk drive configurations that will fit into a given bay in their computers. These standard sizes are often referred to as a disk drive's form factor. The challenge facing disk drive manufacturers, therefore, is to fit as much storage as possible into a standard sized package. One way of solving this problem is discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,208,712 which is hereby incorporated herein by reference and which is assigned to the same assignee as this application. The various embodiments of the present invention improve upon the invention disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,208,712 by further reducing the height of the load beam suspension assembly, thereby reducing the spacing between the disks and enabling either a reduction in the height of the drive, or the addition of disks while maintaining the same height.